At the core-city Toronto pharmacy where I get the medley of meds that keeps me above the frost line, a sign will soon go up announcing the new OxyContin clones will not be stocked.

This is seen as preventative medicine.

Being located in a rather sketchy part of town, already rife with low-end drug dealers, social service agencies and social housing projects, this is the small pharmacy’s way of keeping itself below the radar when it comes to break-ins, face-to-face holdups and having to deal with potentially forged scripts.

Years ago, when it was located across the street, it was robbed at least once or twice a month — then mostly for Percocet, the go-to street narcotic of that era — but it has been hit less now that its new location offers fewer escape routes.

In the last five years, it has been robbed three times, which takes it off the Toronto holdup squad’s speed dial.

But it is now on guard again.

The great worry among many pharmacists is there will be a rise in robberies as a result of OxyContin being delisted, coupled with the fact that any new generic drug containing the active narcotic of oxycodone will not be covered in Ontario by social benefit programs like OxyContin was.

Those on welfare, or disability, will now have to dig into their own limited pockets to pay for the new generics, and not have it paid or reimbursed by the Ontario government.

In a case of sleight of spin, the Ontario government claimed it was moving to limit access to generic Oxy unless it’s in a tamper-resistant form, and the province won’t pay Ontario Drug Benefit recipients if the drug can be easily be crushed and dissolved into an injectable liquid.

The suggestion, of course, is the government will pay if the copycat Oxy meets the government’s terms and requirements.

Don’t believe it because it won’t happen.

This is why pharmacies in areas where drug abuse is high are expecting the worst, including robberies, worrying about legitimate users of the narcotic facing victimization, either by thieves lying in wait or local dealers wanting prescription access.

The replacement drug for OxyContin — OxyNeo — is a timed-release oxycodone with additives that purportedly make it less open to abuse, which is bad news for those wanting to inject or snort the drug for a better and quicker wallop.

Crush an OxyNeo and its buck-bang disappears.

As my pharmacist put it, “If you are legitimately prescribed OxyNeo for back pain, whatever, it will do the job.

“But, as a street drug, it is next to useless.”

Thus his worry about copycat Oxy filling that void, leading him to post a sign in his pharmacy’s window advertising the fact his cupboard is bare of this highly addictive and potent narcotic.

“It’s just not worth the risk,” he said.

Before OxyContin got yanked from the shelves, each 80 mg pill — its most-potent strength — was selling in pharmacies for $484 per

100 tablets, plus dispensing.

On the street, however, that $4.84 pill was selling for upwards of $50 to $85.

The price at both ends, therefore, was expected to plummet as the copycat drug, apo-oxycodone, began rolling out. But it doesn’t look as if it will.

In one fact sheet obtained by Sun Media, for example, the generic drug manufacturer, Apotex, is advertising its wholesale price of the most-potent version of the Oxy clone for approximately

$446 per 100 — not exactly a deep discount of the OxyContin sold by Perdue Pharma during the years it held the patent.

Now, with that patent protection gone, the market is wide open, leading to another generic drug manufacturer, Cobalt Pharmaceuticals, to write to its retailers, “We are strongly behind the safe and appropriate use of medications, especially opioids, and commend Health Canada for adhering to its well-established approval process.”

In other words, place your orders. The real deal is back.

— Mark Bonokoski is QMI Agency’s national editorial writer

Poll

Do you think there will be a rise in robberies as a result of OxyContin being delisted?

Sign of the times: Pharmacies fear a rise in robberies, among other things, and therefore refuse to carry Oxy clones

At the core-city Toronto pharmacy where I get the medley of meds that keeps me above the frost line, a sign will soon go up announcing the new OxyContin clones will not be stocked.

This is seen as preventative medicine.

Being located in a rather sketchy part of town, already rife with low-end drug dealers, social service agencies and social housing projects, this is the small pharmacy’s way of keeping itself below the radar when it comes to break-ins, face-to-face holdups and having to deal with potentially forged scripts.